Darcy Journal - month 8 - The Tree of Knowledge

When I was away last weekend, Darcy posted her final page in her monthly journalling series with Paperartsy. The Tree of Knowledge - which involved a recap of some of the techniques we'd learnt over the last 7 months - and drawing... eek!!

However, I wasn't going to be undone by drawing a tree to join in the final challenge.  Here is my entry.

 I used a mixture of Fibralos (I have the 15 chunky set, so quite limited with colours) and water colour pencils (Inktense and WH Smith) for my background

loved re-visiting the torn paper as a mask border and the mini wall stamp is lovely.

 my tree - I sketched it roughly on paper first as recommended by Darcy, then on the journal but rather than fill in the lines, I kind of used it as a guide, and painted the branches.

 I then had a panic about the leaves, as I didn't have the Urban Snapshot set Darcy used, but a twitter convo resulted in Darcy suggesting Sara Naumann's set 12- one of the new ones - for Paperartsy, as there is a splotchy stamp that was perfect!  3 colours of Fresco - Holly, Tinned Peas and Sage - give a lovely soft full in leaf tree look - thanks Darcy, thank goodness you were on twitter at the right time!

then on to the technique leaves - die cut as Darcy showed, (only had to staple one together, lol! ) and chose my techniques to fit on such a small space.. I chose - (left page) stencilling on tissue, crackle, blending opaques, torn stamped tissue; (right page ) masterboard (I had some of the one I used for Darcy's previous month where we did this, so die cut a leaf from it) blending Treasure Gold, stencilling resist with portfolios,  stamping into gesso.

and to show that the apples really do keep the leaves in place!

and of course the apples themselves! cool idea Darcy, they were fun to do (once I got a red I liked mixed)

thanks for months of fun with this Darcy and all your hard work getting these pages ready for us to try!
It's been great to play along.

A brilliant weekend of crafting fun

Hi, just got home from a fabulous weekend at Lin Brown's with Sam, Emma, Lin, Lesley and Karen.

If we gloss over the travel chaos that Lin and I had to go through to get there, everything ran like clockwork., even if Saturday started with a 5am alarm call...

The venue we used last time, the Bead Scene, was no longer available, so Lin very bravely allowed us into her home.. we were soon hard at work

concentrating hard!

 Not sure if Lin is thinking "what have I done letting this lot in...."

 part of day one's project, this fabulous chipboard book

 

 I'll show the rest of it tomorrow

 Sam and Emma trying to decide what to have from the huge menu for dinner...

Day two saw us experimenting with lots of different products, most of which I'd not used before - this is Silks, but we tried Colour Blooms (need!) Brushos (probably need) Gelatos (must have) Intense pencils (do have!) and lots more - the screen printing was fantastic fun...

 lots of chatting, laughing, drinking tea and eating chocolate, we made tags galore, played in journals (some of us) and had loads of fun...

 Mark, Lin's lovely hubby, took the obligatory group shot, we couldn't leave out Meg, their gorgeous dog

see,  told you we laughed all weekend!

I'll take some pics of the tags we made tomorrow, so come back and see more of what we did.

Lin and Mark, thanks for welcoming us into your home (and for the guided tour of Lin's wonderful studio) and for the endless cups of tea and coffee.

Girls, it was great to spend 2 fun-filled days with you. See you all soon. xx